Favorite Schools

Favorite Teams

Error 404 - what they're saying about Healthcare.gov: The Punditocracy

Barack Obama

An audience comprising of White House staff members, stands as President Barack Obama leaves the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington, Thursday, Oct. 17, 2013, after he made a statement. Lawmakers Wednesday voted to avoid a financial default and reopen the government after a 16-day partial shutdown. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

With President Barack Obama set to to address the error-plagued rollout of the new insurance exchanges during a Rose Garden speech this morning, here's a quick review of what the pundits are saying about the issue.

"There are two reasons why the Republican quest to rid the land of Obamacare is going nowhere. First, unless the GOP takes over the Senate in 2014 and the White House in 2016, the Affordable Care Act will stay on the books. Second, opponents have yet to articulate what they would replace theincreasingly popular (relatively speaking, of course) law with. But that’s not stopping the deadenders on Capitol Hill. They are not giving up."

"If you had told me, months ago, that weeks after the health care law’s coverage expansion went into effect I would be writing about the problems its launch had exposed, I would have assumed I’d be writing about rate shock, rising premiums and the disappearance of many cheap insurance plans — basically, all the problems conservatives have worried will make Obamacare a ruinously expensive failure if they play out as we fear they might."

"A blow to the gut tends to be mightier when delivered by the fist of unintended consequences. In 1923, five years after the implementation of the 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that effectively banned alcohol, Americans felt disillusioned with Prohibition. None of the grand promises of what would follow its passage had come to pass — not even close."

"One of the many disgraceful aspects of the media coverage of Obamacare--and criticism of the ACA, and the Tea Party claims in general--is the rote depiction of the new law as "very unpopular" or "opposed by most Americans according to polls" because it goes too far. Most people are said to be happy with the health care system as is, and so on. In other words, repeating the GOP line."

""No, no," Pelosi replied. "It has nothing to do with the programmatic part. It's about technology." But some experts have warned that if the technology isn't working weeks or months from now, Obamacare's federal insurance exchange could be thrown into a "death spiral." To function, the exchange needs enough young and healthy people to sign up, and if the healthcare.gov website isn't working, the people most likely to take the additional time and effort to sign up will be old and sick."